


Oleander

by PastelWonder



Series: Oh Sweet Girl, The Stars Can’t Save You Now... [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arkanian Culture, F/M, Fluff, Grand Marshal Hux, Open Air Markets, Parasols, Reluctant Bride Rose, Soft kissing, Strolling, TROS Fix-It Fic, lunching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:28:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26304160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/pseuds/PastelWonder
Summary: There is a lot Rose doesn't understand about Arkanians.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Series: Oh Sweet Girl, The Stars Can’t Save You Now... [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884511
Comments: 8
Kudos: 60





	Oleander

**Author's Note:**

>   
>    
> 

There is a lot Rose doesn't understand about Arkanians.

She wonders about this as she sits at a small, comfortable bistro on the porch of a small, elegant cafe with her man. The patio is empty except for the two of them, reserved for their afternoon meal. The tables are beautiful. Dark ironwork in gentle curls which make intricate patterns of leaves and flowers. Something only a Hays girl would pay attention to. There is a smooth, cobble slate floor and more beautifully wrought iron in the short, ornamental gate around the porch.

The gate is hung with husk-fiber baskets which _overpour_ with flowers. Lush, trailing riots of sweet pink and yellow blooms. Their innocent faces peer up through the gentle shadow of the porch's screen awning up at the Arkanese sun.

Her man is across from her, in his dark, immaculate, smooth-wool uniform. Chair angled, its round back the same beautiful iron scroll as the tabletop. His right ankle is propped up on his left knee. He sips his coffee, watching the passersby and the quiet streets around Grand Park. The broad, brick-cobbled pathway up to the park's impressive ornamental double-archway, a monument to the First Fathers. And her.

He is watching her always, pale blue eyes struck near-white by the filtered leer of the sun. Sipping his aftermeal coffee from a delicate white cup. His laser-lipped rapier sleeps in peace at his hip.

He is perfectly relaxed.

"You do not prefer your lunch," it is not a question, merely a gentle observation. Made at her plate of... Rose doesn't know what it is. Soft, leafy greens with lace edges. Tiny, delicate eggs which have been soft-boiled and split in half nestled in amongst bits of pungent cheese and rose-colored radishes. Honestly, it looks like fathier food.

She pokes a leaf coated lightly in some sort of sweet, acidic dressing and makes a face.

"I mean.... no?" _Who would eat this kriff?_

Ever-attentive - okay, _smotheringly_ attentive - her man leans his arm on the table and asks, "Would you like a steak?"

Rose catches the soft meat of her bottom lip between her teeth.

She shouldn't, it's wasteful. Children in the Galaxy could be starving - although with all the crop cultivation the Final Empire has successfully engineered in the last standard alone - _no_ \- there must still be _some_ kids on the Outer going hungry and they would kill to have even a bite of her... her... _whatever_ the kriff this is.

She feels so guilty. Constantly. Sitting in a silk, pale mauve dress. Wearing more credits in strung pearls and tear drop earrings and this enormous - _ostentatious_ , her man would say - brilliant ring on her married finger than her family had between the last six generations. Her hair in long, loose curls around her shoulder, eyes made up softly like a cat's peeking under a thick row of black, glossy bangs. Her sister wouldn't recognize. And now she's going to get picky about _food_?

As he so often does, her man reads her mind. Blue eyes drifting calmly over her lip worrying and her fingers pulling anxiously at each other in her lap until the knuckles crack.

He lilts his chin to make a brief, graceful signal at someone behind her.

A boy her age appears in a crisp white coat. "Sir?"

Armitage order a steak cooked rare and soft rice for her. He also orders cake to be brought out with her coffee after her meal. The boy nods, thrilled to be a linchpin in this critical mission - _feed the Grand Marshal's spoiled, picky wife_ \- and dashes off after repeating their order as if they are running out of time.

 _Stars, just kill me_ , thinks Rose, miserable at the waste.

Until seamlessly, as if it is the most natural course, Armitage's dark-gloved hand spans the tiny breadth of their table and takes her plate of fatheir fodder and sets it before himself. He's already eaten his meal -two courses of it - a rarity in and of itself for her husband who prefers a much simpler regime of enhanced nutri-packs.

He eats the leaves with knife and fork, casual-as-you-please.

She wishes he wouldn't be so empathetic. It's confusing.

"I have a surprise for you, after our meal," his voice is so regal. Sliding smoothly across the table as he trims a leaf with egg bit to the perfect size.

Rose's steak and rice arrive promptly and with a little bow. The steam wafting off the prize cut of shaak meat smells _delicious_. Pink, translucent juices leach tantalizing into the rice.

She eats more like a happabore than like an Arkanian _lay-day_. But at least she uses a knife and fork.

"Fhat?" she smacks around a delicious chunk of shaak the size of her thumb. The meat is tender, richly seasoned. It melts in her mouth.

"If I told you," her man's eyes glint with humor as he pauses, another meticulous bite of leaf on his fork, "it wouldn't be a surprise."

She rolls her eyes.

Almost an hour later, after she’s stuffed herself with enough seared shaak and rice and cake to feed a small Hasian village, she and Armitage walk the brick-cobbled boulevard in Grand Park. The little bistro and its waiter beaming from a successful mission are far behind her; if she turns and looks over her shoulder, past the small pearl spokes of her white lace parasol, she would see its shaded patio through the arches of the First Fathers monument. Just the vague, watercolor impression of it. Shadow and bright flowers spilling over the gate.

It’s Primeday, an unusual day to be out in the park. But her man cleared his schedule to bring her here, into the Capitol many hours by land travel from their - well, _his_ \- estate. He has been gone a lot lately, doing what Rose doesn't ask because she doesn't want to know. _Is it war, is it slave-trade? Is it rooting out and killing the last of everyone I used to know?_

It's been four months since their - not _wedding_ , she thinks, remembering those beautiful, icy festivals of vivid blues and greens and silvers and tables bowing under rich, spicy foods and painted, headressed mammoths for the groomsman and booming laughter and endless dancing and running children and beaming mothers and happily tipsy fathers that were weddings back home. That cold, bleak, struggling, drug-stumbling march to his war ship's dark, empty chapel - standing before a solemn clad priest as the sedatives in her blood made the lights of the candles all around them cycle together and blur - Armitage's arms like Haysian smelt around her, _like a prison_ , as he bowed deeply to take her mouth, “- _you may now kiss the bride_....”

 _Nope. Not a wedding,_ she thinks, watching the hem of her lady's dress absorb the cobbled brick path. Chest tight, hand in her man's arm hardly holding onto him.

It's been four months since _that_.

She's... adapted. Surviving.

 _Oh, is that what you were doing?_ a voice like her younger, more blazing, hyper critical self snaps, _When you were fucking for him this morning on your back, and again on that stupid... whatever thing he calls that thing... a fainting couch? In the living room, just like that? Oh, okay, great_ survival strategy _, Rose-_

"Do you see the girls painting pictures?" his voice, gentle as a drift of breeze down Hays Mountain, soothes over her thoughts.

_Am I that obvious? Or is he that obsessed?_

_Probably both_.

She looks up where he pointing with his eyes and subtle jut of his chin and sees what he means.

The smooth, verdant, jewel-bright lawn is dappled with girls from her age to teeny tiny, arranged prettily on blankets or wicker stools with little balsam easels or thick, broad pads of paper in their laps. The youngest ones sprawl themselves in dresses with skirts to their knees and soft white hose. Bright ribbons in their hair tickle in the breeze and fall into their eyes. Their cheeks are rosy, their little rosebud mouths intent they paint or draw. The older girls are a bit more poised, in their longer gowns like Rose's, hair drawn up into thick, intricate styles.

It is the tradition that marriageable Arkanian girls wear their hair elaborately, as a sign they are available and old enough to court. New brides and young mothers wear theirs down or gathered in half, usually strung through with jeweled strands or beaded headdresses or strings of pearls. A sign of their husband's wealth and status, also of their beauty and sensuality. _Fertility_. The older mothers and matrons - Rose can spot them around the park, reading books or chatting politely with their parasols folded in their laps - wear the smoothest, most classic styles. Still with a few tasteful, elaborate broaches and strands.

Absolutely nothing is ever direct in Arkanian culture. Everything is _symbol this_ and _implied that_. It drives Rose banthashit nuts.

 _Just wear your hair however the fuck you want to_.

But the _Great Fathers of Arkanis_ have decided...

 _Whatever_.

Still, the girls are so, so pretty. Strewn like dollies across the lawn. Rose wants to sketch them all in her journal. Really, she wants to gather them all up to her and protect them from this world. Even the mothers- especially the mothers. Haysians are so matriarchal - their village leaders are the elder men, true - but their wives rule the home. It seemed so natural to Rose growing up, and she feels sorry for these women who have to _ask permission_ from their husbands, who will some day be bossed around like naughty little chickens by their grown sons.

Rose feels sorry for herself, and maybe - _nope, not at all_ \- for Armitage.

She's not exactly a model Arkanian wife

The weather is fair for their visit to the Capitol. It rains more cycles of the standard than not on this world. Rose enjoyed it at first - the novelty of clean, clear water falling from the skies to soak the thirsty ground. Almost until the forests were bogs and the fields wetlands. Tall, blight-resistant stalks of green wheat wavering on the south side of their estate like reeds in a stream's muddy throat.

But after so many months of wet and grey-seething skies, she is grateful for the sun.

Above her, her parasol dapples shadows across her breasts beneath their sheer veil tucked into the neck of her gown. She prefers the empire-waist style to the corseted dresses some of the other ladies prefer. Cinched dresses don't really suit the way Rose eats.

Her hair is gathered only by a few tendrils from her temples, braided and woven together into an Arkanian love knot in the back, over the rest of her long, loosely curled hair. Held by a platinum and diamond clasp and surrounded by more, subtle barrettes of thin platinum from which dangle long, tear-shaped pearls. Her ornaments tinkle a little with each step she takes.

She feels like a festival tauntaun, sometimes.

Mainly though, she feels like a fraud.

"Ah, here we are," her man's subtle exclamation distracts her train of thought. "Handmaid's Square."

 _Okay. Weird name_. She looks around.

It's an open-air market straight off Grand Park. A smooth slate-cobble square lined with booth after tidy, pretty, well-kept booth and ceilinged overall by white gauze netting suspended between tall posts.

Instantly, it reminds Rose of the swap-markets her papa used to take her and Paige to on trade runs. Cleaner, sure. And less bustling. Far brighter, lined with balsam wood booths light enough to be folded and tucked away when the weather inevitably turned damp.

But the colors, the smells of fresh-popped maze and roasting caramel, fried dough and spicy cinnamon and steeped ginger roots, the rows and rows of beautiful printed fabrics - silks and calicos and hand-loomed tapestries - housewares and sparkling stained glass panels hung on booths along the perimeter to catch the sun's light - _these_ remind her of the swap-market. Her heart _beats_ , aching. Stretched taut by happy memories and the promise of something new.

Something fun...

She tugs his elbow and squeals. "Armitage, it's a market! It's a market, look-"

Her man's blue eyes hood with pleasure. His mouth gives an amused twitch as he concedes quietly, "So it is."

The colors are dazzling, women and their children bustle around, service drones trailing dutifully, carrying their brown paper purchases tied with red-and-white string.

She is... incandescent.

He tells her as they breach the first row of stalls, "This used to be a slaver's market."

That stops her in her stupid velvet and eyelet shoe-tracks.

She turns from the first stall of stained glass panels - the one that's already caught her eye is of a beautiful ice blue hummingbird against white oleander and green leaves, and gapes. " _Here?_ Right next to a _park_? What the fuck is wrong with you people?"

The stall owner, a round, pleasant-looking older man, balks.

Her Marshal smirks. "It was a servant's market, where the women of the elite came to procure servants for the household-"

Rose moves slowly down the rows of balsam stalls, peeking in curiously at their beautiful, innocent wares. Trying to imagine _people_ being sold here, instead of delicate enamel pillboxes and sacks of refined, flavored cocoas.

Her man follows her at a few feet, hands folded judiciously behind his back. "Handmaids, housekeepers, gardeners. Cooks, wet-nurses... Kitchen girls."

The last one he says a bit softer than the others. Trailingly. Bent gracefully with back straight to examine a line of jeweled hairpins laid on red velvet in the open air.

"Hence the name, Handmaid's Square."

The market bustles gently. A breeze wends through the stalls and ripples like a breath across the gauze canopy above. Down the next aisle, a child is laughing. A little boy, with a bright, piping voice.

Rose feels rooted to the slate cobblestone.

Her chest cinches. Watching his profile still studying hawkishly the little lines of hairpins, she practically whispers, "But your mother-"

"Was traded here, yes," there he is. Mister Tacit. Marshal oh-so-matter-of-fact.

He straightens without acknowledging the shopkeep hovering nearby if needed. His eyes are on her. On Rose.

Children race past them shrieking happily. A girl and a boy. The girl is trailing colorful streamers of ribbon from a miniature maypole she holds above her like a baton.

When Rose blinks, her lashes are damp.

_There are so many things about you I don't understand, Armitage..._

She just wants to hold him. But she's not sure if... that kind of... _lack of decorum_ , would make the telling of it worse. Her white lace parasol feels heavy in her useless hands.

They are only a few feet apart.

Regally, as if pointing out a bit of trivia, he tells her, "Slavery in the New Empire was abolished as of last month."

Her breath catches.

There is no one - no one in this market but them.

Rose.

And her man.

"In all our systems, not just the Core. And the Outer Rim," he adds conversationally, chin angled to take in a line of silks arrayed by color hanging in a stall across the narrow lane. Hands still clasped casually behind his back. "Of course, policy is one matter-"

"It's _everything_ ," her breathless warble cuts in.

"Enforcement is another," his eyes sweep the aisle, its pretty wares and clean, slave-less stalls. "But I intend for Arkanis to be the model. The Galaxy's first completely free world. We will be the beacon-"

He demures slyly as finally, he meets her eyes, "At least, that is my intent."

"And I usually have my way," he adds.

Rose's heart flutters too wildly for words. _This_ \- this is what he's been away working on? A Galaxy with no more slaves? Not even in the time of the first and second Republics was that a reality - there were always concessions, always finagling.

But her Marshal is an absolutist in the extreme. If he says he will eradicate slavery across systems-

_Gods help the masters and the slavers._

She launches.

He catches her inside his strong arms with a soft, amused sound.

Her parasol tips, her periphery becomes a veil of soft white as he bends low. Their kiss is long. _Tender._ The market teems gently in the background as she holds his biceps through his uniform coat, pale painted nails delicate against the imperious black. His arm around her waist draws her closer. He cups her cheek, thumbs her tear away with his glove.

She can't swallow when their lips slowly, finally peel apart. Her heart is too big in her throat.

"I'm proud of you," she whispers. Softly, so that her ancestors won't hear. It's the first sweet thing she's said to him since... well. Since he came back to life. To her. Her lips tremble.

But she means it.

She means it.

His forehead touches her. She sees herself - darker, more beautiful, _Otomokian_ \- in the surface of his eyes.

He savors this - her - for a long time.

She holds him just as much.

A oneshot by PastelWonder

**Author's Note:**

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